Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Blogger won't allow me to be naked

Did that catch your attention? Don't worry. You will not see me partially clothed. Scary thought...

This is really all about my new domain name.

When Mark and I first tried to come up with a name, it was for his fused glass business. We were planning to tap into the quilting community and eventually vended quite a few quilt shows in the process. We wanted his business to have a kind of generic theme that would relate to quilts but not be too restrictive. And that is how Around the Block Designs was born.
This was the only logo I could find--interestingly we didn't ever actually do gift certificates. Weird.
 
We got to the point where we had a website and wanted to also have an etsy shop. Etsy had a rule about shop names not exceeding 20 characters. Around the Block Designs is 21. So we dropped the "s". If you typed the name in the etsy search bar but included the "s" it would say there was no shop by that name.
Confusing. Especially since everything we purchased as part of branding the business and building our booth had that pesky "s".


And then I started blogging. But I felt like Around the Block Designs was not a really "interesting name" for blogging purposes and wanted something catchier when I left comments, something that would make people think, "Hmmmm... wonder what that person is all about."

So that's how "Live A Colorful Life" was born.  This was my blog header for quite awhile because we were still combining the ideas of fused glass and quilting.

I had this one for awhile. It was fun.
But still not "me." And then I discovered Julia at Little Girl Quilts. She lives in Berlin! And with back-and-forth emails over the course of a week or two, she came up with this fabulous design. I still love it!

But here's the problem. When I registered with Blogger, it was as "aroundtheblockdesigns.blogspot.com." A couple of my things have been published in magazines and so that was the contact information that would go along with the articles, and it's really hard to make the connection between that and Live a Colorful Life.  And that particular blogspot URL is unavailable. In fact, this is the message you get when you type it in.

Sorry, the blog at liveacolorfullife.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.

Big bummer, in my opinion. I decided to break down and buy my domain name. But the .com version was already taken. Back and forth I went with decision making. I finally ended up with the .net version. Then back to Blogger to have it redirected. And this is where the naked and non-naked comes in.

I didn't even know what that meant. Well, I mean, I KNOW what it means in terms of wearing clothing. Or not. But what it means in blogger-speak is that they will only redirect your blog if you include the "www," in other words, non-naked. Type in liveacolorfullife.net (naked) and this is what you get:

Sorry, the blog you were looking for does not exist. However, the name aroundtheblockdesings is available to register!
 
 Do you see the problem there? Like who would even want to register a name that has the word "designs" misspelled?

I realize I could throw caution to the wind, leave Blogger in the dust, and just go naked. But I'm always afraid of what that means in terms of starting over, building up readership again, etc. (If any of you have information you would like to share in that regard, I would love to hear from you.)

So at this point...you can either keep finding me at aroundtheblockdesigns.blogspot.com, or at the fully clothed version: www.liveacolorfullife.net

Either way, I just hope you find me!


21 comments:

05 08
Jennie {Clover and Violet} said... #

Hi Cindy, if you're considering switching to self-hosted Wordpress, I'd be happy to point you in the right direction. Though it is not free (you have to pay for hosting yearly), it is amazingly user friendly and I've helped others with it too. Let me know if this is something you'd like more info on!

Elizabeth Dackson said... #

Very interesting story, indeed! And very strange - I wonder if it's a .net related issue, because most of the other Blogger redirects that I read (including my own) I type in without the WWW and get to them a-ok...hmm...anyway, congratulations on your .net upgrade, that's really exciting!!

Selfsewn said... #

Well I've found you here? I had similar nightmares changing my name.
Blogger allow you to change your name of your blog url which is what I did, the only problem was that all my links via flickr and other places no longer worked!! So I changed it all back and started a brand new blog, it was daunting, but my followers soon found me. What ever you decide we will always be there xx

Lucy | Charm About You said... #

I usually just read you in my feed but I look at your site enough to remember aroundtheblockdesign and if you google live a colourful life it brings you here so its all good for me :)

Amanda @ BedTime Quilting said... #

Just FYI, I am reading from your .net right now and I didn't do anything different from normal to read your site.

Lorna McMahon said... #

Glad to see you here, or where ever. www is not a bad thing! Still following!

Carla said... #

We would go to the ends of the earth my dear. When I first started up a blog a few years ago, I bought my name and was hacked--twice. When I logged on there was a flaming devils face and big letters YOU've been hacked! I freaked and went to blogger. Not a problem since. Your story is interesting how you got started. I was following you when you got your new header : )

Heidi Staples said... #

I've wondered myself what's involved with making a switch like that. Thank goodness for readers -- I've had no trouble finding you there!

Vicki said... #

How fun to hear your story! I will chase you down no matter where you end up!!

Teje Karjalainen said... #

Hi Jennie! I think there could be many of us who are interested to learn more about self-hosted Wordpress. Any chance you could write something in your blog? I'm your follower. Thanks!

Teje Karjalainen said... #

Hi! Fortunately I found you - you are 'normally' in my Bloglovin! All that sounds very confusing - I can't believe I have made my blog alone and had to 'fix' something to that I have the same address with the name because first I signed in with a name I didn't really choose and thought I can change it later.
I changed my blog address 6 months ago and I'm happy that my readers followed me. Still there are many that didn't realize my moving yet and follow my old blog. x Teje

Ivete Tecedor said... #

This doesn't sound right at all, especially the misspelled "design" part. It sounds to me like a typo in the non-www entry is causing this problem, because it IS sending you to blogger, just to the wrong blogger subdomain. How did you set up the URLs? If you did them via DNS, check if you have two entries, one for www and one for non-www. If you do, you should simply make the non-www one go to www, that way they're definitely going to the same place. If you did it within Blogger somewhere, same thing, check that if there are two settings, that they match.

I'm a web dev in my "real life" . .. email me if you'd like me to help you fix this =)

Lee said... #

Huh, this is very odd - like Elizabeth said, my domain redirects even if you don't type in the www. So I wonder why they won't let yours do it? Well, at least you have your Life a Colorful Life domain now! Good luck straightening it all out!

Katy Cameron said... #

How bizarre! Now funnily I have the blogspot address in my dashboard reading list, but it's the fully clothed version I see in the address line

Molly said... #

Oh Cindy, all this talk makes me itchy- I hate computer stuff! UGH! I found you no problem though, same way I always have- don't know what that means- but I found you! Hope some of these super smart commenters can help you out- sounds like it could be fixable? Fingers crossed for you!
hugs!!

Nita said... #

I used to blog as celebrationsbellydance.com. Then I changed my name to nitadances because I was blogging about so much more than dance, but I didn't want to loose the "dance" because of my dancer followers. NitaDances seemed the perfect solution. I use wordpress but am hosted by tutshi.net. "My guy" at Tutshi put a re-direct on my old celebrations site, so when people go there they are sent to my NitaDances site - simple as that. After 2 years, I let the old name go.

Nita said... #

oops...that should have been http://www.tutshiweb.com/ not Tutshi net. Sorry.

Susan at TheBoredZombie.com said... #

You can do naked with blogger. There's a few ways to handle it and it depends on who hosts your URL. I wrote a blog post about it a while back...

http://theboredzombie.com/2013/05/the-sunday-geekery-blogs-domains-and-dns-oh-my-part-1.html

(sorry, no part 2). In my case, the best solution was to "Forward the address". If someone asked for it naked, my registrar would go ahead and make put the .com (in my case) on the URL before sending it to google.

I think you might have something else going on - when I had naked domain problems, google would give me a whoopsie 404 type message that says it didnt have an associated blog for that name. Seems solvable though. :)

sarah elizabeth :: {no} hats said... #

I don't know, "around the block de-sings" has a nice rhythm to it, right? :)

But really, booo to domain name troubles!

Unknown said... #

Ick. This is making my head hurt. :( I hope you get it figured out soon! You're in my blogroll already, so I'm not leaving and you can't make me!

charlotte said... #

I follow you on Bloglovin' an since that works for me, I am still able to follow you easily. I know you will get it sorted out. Lots of savvy folks out there to help you.